In your numerous cites of Catholic writers, it is not that they are “correcting” the vulgate, they are emphasizing the works are not sufficient. Certainly Bellarmine was no Lutheran, and to pretend that he is buying into Luther’s bad translation is disingenuous. If you are going to open up your book (on my word, I have only used my head for my major points), then this discussion will unravel, as St. Thomas has a great deal to write about justification, and to take a phrase out of such a discussion is a parlour trick.
The word isn’t in there. Luther added it. If it were just to make for better German, Germans wouldn’t have to lean on it for a radically different theology. Scads of literate Germans read the Latin, and didn’t come up with Luther’s version.
Every year, when the reading turns to 2nd Corinthians, and the term “bowels” is used in a way unfamiliar to most modern Americans, our priest explains what is meant. That is preferred to changing the word to something that might be more in tune with modern idiom, but NOT what God inspired the Sacred writer to write.
My point was not that all these other writers subscribed to sola fide (nor that that excludes the necessity of a faith that will effects work), or that the word was there, any more than many other words are not actually in the Greek when translators add them in conveying what they see as the meaning, but simply that others saw “alone” as warranted, though i myself oppose such additions here and in general.
The interpretation hinges on whether “works of the law” only refers to those, versus all such systems of justification based upon being actually moral worthy, with the Law being used for if man could be justified by any such system then it would be the Law.
“for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” (Galatians 3:21)
Obviously since Abraham was counted as righteous before the Law, then that in conversion one is justified by faith is what is being taught. Yet as faith without works is dead, so one can be said to be justified by works, as the latter vindicates one as having faith, but not as if his works make him actually holy enough to be with God.
” If it were just to make for better German, Germans wouldn’t have to lean on it for a radically different theology...
Every year, when the reading turns to 2nd Corinthians, and the term “bowels” is used in a way unfamiliar to most modern Americans, our priest explains what is meant. That is preferred to changing the word to something that might be more in tune with modern idiom, but NOT what God inspired the Sacred writer to write.”
They did not “lean on it” - that we are saved by faith and not by working is excruciatingly obvious to anyone who reads the New Testament, and reasonably obvious to anyone who reads the Old.
Nor is the goal of a Bible translation to create something that you must go to the priest to understand. As Tyndale pointed out, if you have the scripture translated, you can judge the priest, instead of “leaning on” the priest.
The Jews were commanded to know God’s Word themselves, so why would it be wrong for Christians to have access?
Your arguments against Bible translations were made for hundreds of years by the Catholic Church, but it eventually broke down and allowed commoners to read the scripture - although it prefers translations that twist the meanings of words like “repent”.
You are selling what no one is buying, not even the Catholic Church anymore - that commoners are not smart enough or godly enough to read God’s word in their own tongue.
Why is this a bad translation of 2 Cor 6:
“We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. 12 You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. 13 In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.”
Instead of:
“Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.”
Do you know nothing of the duty of a translator? Why is it the Catholic Church now agrees with translating it: “ You are not constrained by us; you are constrained by your own affections”?
There were more than a few words put in the Vulgate that were not their in the Greek or Aramaic.
Google “Moses’s Horns”. In old Catholic icons, it pictures Moses with horns coming down from the mountain. That was a slip of Jerome, the more modern translations read it as his face shown.